Republicans are realizing that Jeb Bush is their only option in 2016

T
wo months ago, I predicted that Jeb Bush would be the Republican nominee for president in 2016. The case was simple. With Chris Christie's nascent presidential campaign fatally imploding and the rest of the GOP field too weak to stop the Hillary Clinton juggernaut, a panicked Republican establishment was bound to turn to a known, safe, and relatively centrist quantity to serve as its standard bearer.

Many readers angrily dismissed the suggestion — though I noticed that many of my most passionate critics also tended to be Republicans who very much preferred Jeb not to be the nominee. Their argument was also easy to make: at the time Jeb was showing little sign of running, and there were comparatively few people clamoring for him to throw his hat into the ring.

What a difference a couple of months can make. Roughly a week into the first bona fide Jeb Bush presidential boomlet, the man who once flatly denied any intention of running has been remarkably busy. He teamed up with Louisiana Gov. (and presidential aspirant) Bobby Jindal on a video to promote a new project (NewRepublican.org) that will shape a positive message for the GOP going into the midterms and beyond. He attended a private dinner with Republican mega-donor (and Israel superhawk) Sheldon Adelson in his airplane hangar. He did a sit-down interview on Fox News Sunday. And he was at the center of a celebration of the 25th anniversary of his father's presidency, which featured a who's-who line-up of establishment Republicans openly urging the former Florida governor to run.